Okay, intense is one of those buzzwords for Scorpio that if you’re Scorpio you’ve come to hate. You mostly hate it because everyone describes “you” as intense even when you feel as placid as an enclosed lake at dawn. I’ve also come to recognize intense as one of those words that can say everything and nothing. Let’s cover the everything part of that statement first. (After all, Scorpio is “all or nothing, right?!)

When we say that the Sun, moon, and Venus are all lined up for an intense eclipse in Scorpio, we’re talking about multiple layers of at least five events—a new moon, an eclipse, a superior conjunction, a Venus in detriment and a Moon in fall. That’s a lot, almost too much. However, it’s not “bad” if you look at each part of this equation. Let’s start with the new moon.

Venus in Scorpio, a cherry on top of an already eventful eclipse

New Moons

A new moon’s sore point is that it’s new. With any particular intention or action attempted at a new moon, there is a tentativeness and reliance on instinct, much how you have it when you wake up in a dark room (familiar or not) and stumble toward the bathroom. You know you have someplace to go, but you can’t see all of the obstacles in your way or perhaps know for sure where the bathroom is if you’re in an unfamiliar place. With a Scorpio new moon, you will start moving with focus in a particular direction, most likely dependent on where Scorpio falls in your chart.

Eclipse

A solar eclipse is a new moon that happens near the moon’s nodes, roughly within 15 degrees. Our total solar eclipses are minor miracles. (This one is only partial, but still important.) A total solar eclipse happens when the moon, in between the Earth and the Sun at that point, appears to cover the Sun. This only happens because the moon is the right distance from the Earth to do so. It’s the Sun’s far distance and the moon’s close distance that allows them to appear even remotely close to the same size. The Sun, after all, is freaking huge! If the moon were a little farther out from the Earth, as it is doing ever so slowly, then we wouldn’t experience any total eclipses. I’ve always found that astronomical fact very fulfilling. It highlights a deeper mystery with an almost improbable fit or click.

An eclipse is like a cosmic or Divine “click” that turns something on, like a planet or cusp of your chart. Different astrologers use different orbs for how close the degree of the eclipse has to be to make that click on a planet or cusp of your chart. I’m generous and give seven-degree orbs, like most new or full moons. Some astrologers are way tighter, like one degree.

However, I agree with colleague Katie Sweetman who thinks this eclipse is extra special and activates the whole of Scorpio because it happens at close to 0 degrees Scorpio. So the eclipse clicks the lights on of a whole house where we find Scorpio in our charts, depending on whether you use whole sign houses or not. (Most people use Placidus house systems, because that’s what they learned and what’s popular. However, there are many different house systems to try. Experiment with what works for you, don’t worry about which one is “right.” They’re all right for the right thing you’re looking for.)

Again, activating Scorpio, activates the Mars imperative to struggle for something, to take action. Scorpio struggles from and for what’s within. Even though a Scorpio may struggle to achieve something in the external world, like becoming a heavyweight champion of the world, it’s only because that Scorpio-influenced person wants to derive inner meaning from the achievement. The intensity that most people speak about with Scorpio is a deep search for meaning at its core. Of course, Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, would be a Martian Aries with a Mars in…cue the band!…Scorpio.

Meaning is a hard thing to define, and this is likely the nothing part of the intensity issue. In my experience, meaning depends on how we seek to redeem, re-envision, or contextualize the past. For instance, becoming a heavyweight champ has meaning for one person because the achievement redeems a sequence of moments when maybe a young boy couldn’t defend himself or his mother against a bellicose and abusive father.

However, another person with a similar childhood might choose a different course of action or not attach as much importance or meaning to a similar sequence of moments. The struggle in Scorpio depends on the clusters of focus for your soul, usually with tributaries flowing from the past. That brings me to a fresher way of understanding both the Moon and Venus in Scorpio, since both planets are traditionally perceived as weaker in that sign.

Venus in Scorpio incarnate — Condoleeza Rice

Moon in Scorpio, in fall

I know it sounds “judgey” to name planets in dignity, detriment, exaltation or fall, but these evaluations help understand a particular kind of focus or even pain that’s reflected in a person’s psyche. When I first learned about these evaluations, I too bristled because I thought they were calling the person who had those placements bad or damaged. Now I bristle for a different reason. Let’s just say that the more astrology I learn, the more I learn that astrology may not work the way we think it works. This is especially true with planets in detriment or fall.

Something sweet, something salty and why it won’t pay to be naughty

I’ve done a whole lecture on the positive and negative issues associated with fall planets, so I won’t go into that here now. However, with the moon in fall, there’s a powerful lesson to learn from it since the moon is the final dispenser of celestial energies.

The Moon, as a primary symbol for how we embody celestial energies, wants most to be comfortable. When she’s in a sign of Mars, she struggles to trust feeling comfortable. In Scorpio, where she’s in fall from her exalted position in the opposite sign, Taurus, she feels that comfort has to be a struggle or earned rather than freely given or appreciated.

Likewise, Luna’s obligated to probe and understand her own motivations and those of other people first rather than simply vibe with them. For her, trust might as well be a four-lettered word. However, strength and determination, as with all planets in fall, come from having a moon in Scorpio. In some form or fashion, a person with a moon in Scorpio has been knocked down or around enough (hopefully only by life itself) to know that she can and will get up. It might feel difficult to feel comfortable in one’s skin, but one knows where every healed and healing wound, bruise, and nick is on one’s skin. The hazard, of course, is to spend too much time licking your wounds rather than attending to your comfort.

Venus in Scorpio, in detriment

A planet in detriment is a little different. With detrimented planets, I should give more of a context, especially for newbies.

First, the simplest way to understand this is without “judgmental” words: Venus in Scorpio is on the opposite Zodiacal shore where she likes to be at home in Taurus. It’s like taking me from the hustle and bustle of my home in New York City to a ghostly quiet place like Clare, Michigan (where I’ve stayed sometime when an ex-girlfriend’s father lived there). It wasn’t bad, per se. It was foreign, and I felt like Casper the ghost there in this overwhelmingly White town. No one ever said anything to me when I was there. I truly felt like an invisible man.

The next thing to understand is about Venus herself. If Mars is about the struggle for or against something, then Venus is about the pleasure of connecting for or with something. Venus appears to magnetize places, people, and things to us. She’s how we experience kinship and the fulfillment of our desires through bonding emotions, which isn’t just love, by the way. Venus can be immensely lustful too. (Venereal diseases, after all, are diseases so named after Venus.)

Is she serious? (Yes, dude, Venus in Scorpio is serious!)

When Venus is in detriment, she struggles to assert her nature through the patronage of Mars, since she’s in his “house” or sign. Firstly, Venus isn’t supposed to be struggling to do jack. She does what pleases her, remember? She shouldn’t be in the struggle-sphere. My take on detriment planets is that their owner (or the native) puts an undue amount of focus and energy on those affairs and issues associated with that planet. For instance, Mercury in detriment could mean that the person communicates well, but has anxiety about being understood or clear. The person might emulate a disorientation that the planet has by being in an unfamiliar sign. Going back to our earlier analogy, it would be like me hustling and bustling all over Clare, MI as if I were in NYC or pricing things as if I were in NYC. I would be out of synch with what’s happening around me.

And that’s a good way to think of Venus in Scorpio, as a struggle to get in synch. The deeper reason why this struggle happens for both Venus and the moon is that in Scorpio we focus on the past as a model for a meaningful future. In my experience, a Venus in Scorpio struggles to redeem the pains of the past through an act of love or passionate connection. It’s as if a Venus in Scorpio, by transit or if it’s natally in your chart, becomes so attached to regret that it only can move forward through making connections or building homages to a personal past or a historical era. This could also manifest as a profound guilt about events that didn’t even happen in your lifetime. Often, however, there’s an inability to freely own this pain, so a person might go at great length to conceal his or her motives. So the person could end up building elaborate mazes or fortresses that distract and defend against anyone getting close enough to making the deep existential bond they want to experience.

Venus in the Royal throne room by exterior conjunction

As I discussed cazimi last week for Mercury, it’s pretty much the same for Venus, except she’s having her superior or exterior conjunction. (Venus’ interior conjunction with the Sun was in mid-January.) For this cazimi Venus in Scorpio, she’s de-briefing with the Sun as she comes to a “full moon” moment. Now she prepares to release the seeds of intention that she gathered in January when she was retrograde in Capricorn. What’s the fruit of those seeds now? One interesting clue comes from Saturn.

Saturn’s the point of connection between the Venus then and now because he’s the patron planet of Capricorn and he’s about to finish his tour of duty in Scorpio in December. Saturn deals with the very concept of time itself as seen by the Greek name for him—Chronos or Kronos. What’s interesting about the myth of Kronos is that here’s a dude who attempted to stall his inevitable future by eating his own kids (who had been prophesied to overthrow him). Shady ain’t the right word for him. That’s CRAAAAAAAZEEEEEYYYYYY!

From this we can see that this eclipse along Venus in Scorpio pulls us toward a pre-occupation with time and the past. We’re cautioned to watch out for attempting to recall a better future for ourselves by hanging on to skewed perceptions of the past. The better lesson for this eclipsed, exterior conjunction moment for Venus is letting go of the past by acknowledging how it’s part of us, but not our only hope for the future. The passionate search for meaning doesn’t have to be self-indulgent, but a self-aware patience to craft passion into something that invites another person or people to partner in building beautiful connections or homages of memory. The person can stop trying to recreate replicas based on a wronged or weaker vision of herself. Instead she can build future palaces of psychic intimacy based on a strength that engenders connection and comfort. It’s really learning the deeper lesson of Scorpio—there is something in you that cannot die or be destroyed. Once there’s trust in that, it becomes possible to focus on creation rather than a defense against destruction.

This post has turned out way longer than I planned, but if you’ve read all of this, I hope it resonates as insightful for understanding what’s happening this week. I will touch on how this “intense” moment will resonate for each sign.

Aries (March 21st to April 19th)

It’s time to lose stuff with this New moon eclipse and exterior conjunction of Venus in your eighth house of loss and other people’s resources. You have a choice with losing stuff, however. You can either lose stuff mindfully and on purpose, by clearing out areas of your house or life where you’ve collected just too much stuff to keep. Or you can mindlessly lose track of stuff, like your iPhone on the bus or your wallet at the bar counter. Obviously, the key is to stay mindful as much as possible, including double-checking on the things you don’t want to lose. This is especially true toward the end of the week when you’re both contending with the eclipse on Thursday and Mercury moving direct on Saturday.

Taurus (April 20th to May 21st)

Scorpio, as your opposite sign, positions you to deal with issues of partnership and how you establish yourself in the public eye. First impressions are indeed lasting impressions, but they are not the only kind of impressions made. You’d do well to perceive first impressions of new people or situations you encounter this week more as clues to a mystery you haven’t solved yet. Be careful of rushing to any judgments, and don’t fret too much about what kind of impression you’ve left on important people you meet now. You can craft a second impression for yourself and others in the weeks ahead that’s even better. You’re definitely about to go on the uptick over the next few months and that begins now.

Gemini (May 21st to June 20th)

All this Scorpio energy lands up in your sixth house of routines and daily maintenance, all the things you need to feel well. With a new moon eclipse, it’s a clear signal that you may need to reboot how you workout or maintain your health through your diet. However, if we dig beneath the surface (as we should in Scorpio), you may need to find smaller yet more potent ways to increase your need for variety or excitement. For instance, imagine for example that you aren’t as bright as you are, and you thought every time you got bored with the home screen of your phone that you had to get a new phone. (Again, this is an imaginative exercise.) However, you might get this way with other things in real life, because you lose a sense of scale. You could, in fact, end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Don’t do that. Think more laser-like in how you can improve, not wholly re-invent, a daily portion of your life.

Cancer (June 21st to July 21st)

The best and most positive message to take from all this powerful Scorpio energy in your fifth house of swag and creativity is that you will likely feel an increase of both. It’s your time to push the envelope in how you connect with others, whether it’s to hook-up (you know what I mean) or collaborate. In other words, if you’ve taken yourself out of commission with dating or doing creative work, then it’s time to get back out there. However, here’s where you have to be careful: the fifth house is also the house of procreativity. In swaying your swag, don’t forget to safeguard your future pleasures. Suit up accordingly.

Leo (July 22nd to August 21st)

Your monthly horoscope
All this heightened “intense” Scorpio action happens in the part of your chart that deals with home and how you experience security and safety. You may come to direct more of your attention to making your home your castle. That’s great if you want to feel more comfortable and you use that de-briefed and cazimi Venus to foster more beauty and creativity in your house. On the other hand, you might choose to forge stronger relationships with family too. However, this gets trickier if you decide to fortify your heart and home more because you don’t want to experience pain or feel a sense of violation. Precautions and cautions don’t have to transform into fortresses to seal you in more.

Virgo (August 22nd to September 21st)

With Scorpio on the cusp of your third house of creating communion with folks on your level, like siblings, neighbors or peers, this eclipsed Venus in Scorpio will test how you’re relating and communicating. You may, in fact, have a mind to be anti-social since it could seem too messy and too much of a struggle to experience connections with folks. Wade into the mess without getting messy, because that’s where the real action is. If someone jerks you over or you experience miscues from them, don’t use that as an indictment. You can better use it as a red flag that there’s a problem to watch. Sometime over the next month, you’ll have to decide whether you can fix it or not. You don’t have to try that part now. Stay open.

Libra (September 22nd to October 21st)

With this fresh charge of Scorpio energy in your second house, it’s time to get your financial house in order literally (since that’s what the second house is all about.) At this point, it’s a good idea to see how you’re in synch with various people connected to your money, like partners, banks, or employers. You will likely have to shift around how some people are working (or not) with what’s happening in your pocketbook or wallet. For instance, you might discover that a favor that you’ve been doing for a friend is now costing you more money than you can afford to lose. It might be time to re-negotiate or scale back.

Scorpio (October 22nd to November 21st)

Your monthly horoscope
If you’ve been essentially having an existential crisis, prompted by all this Libra energy, then it’s time to deep six all of that and focus on the existing part and less on the crisis. No, the crisis hasn’t fully gone away, because the crisis will never go away. These things recede, like waves. Now it’s time to ride the wave, acting more on instinct than pretending you know exactly how all this proceeds. You don’t. It’s your new moon with an eclipsed Venus cherry on top. So a “cherry” of yours is going to get popped, perhaps in the best way possible. Your one job is to be open to possibility, and you can’t do that, at all, if you’re in your head thinking about the rest of your life. You have to be in the rest of your life. It’s one of those times when your storied “all or nothing” focus will serve you well.

Sagittarius (November 22nd to December 21st)

This new moon eclipse with a cherry Venus on top happens in your twelfth house. The twelfth house has a lot of things associated with it in modern astrology, like your subconscious, karma, your own self-undoing, dreams, or where you have to surrender to the cosmos. I call it the price of the ticket. In business, cost is different from price. Cost is the eighth house of what it takes from you to offer something. The twelfth house though is when the cost meets what’s required to experience a profit…or deficit. You may see your actions will have a faster karmic turn-around effect than usual. This is when you have to reflect on your actions. If you focus on the best of your nature, then you may see readily how you’re “purchasing” life at a good “price.” If ish is going in all kinds of challenging directions, you might look closer at whether you’re overdoing things and whether the “profit margin” you’re looking for is realistic.

Capricorn (December 22nd to January 20th)

This bounty of Scorpio energy and blessings comes to you in your eleventh house of friends, social connections and hopes and wishes. This bodes as an important time to shore up your network and to spend quality time with friends. However, it’s the hopes and wishes part of what this house signifies that fascinates me most for you this week. The house before the eleventh house is the tenth, and that’s where you experience your own authority or where you can make an appeal to an authority figure. When you count one house away from the tenth, the eleventh automatically becomes a house to signify what you earn from the previous one. Hence, how you achieve your hopes or wishes. For you, you either can appeal to an authority figure to get what you hope or wish, or, become an authority, give it to your self. I think you’ll choose more and more to build up your own authority after this eclipse.

Aquarius (January 21st to February 18th)

This new moon eclipse with the Venus cherry on top actually does happen at the very top of your chart in your career sector. Eclipses can take a month or months to kick off changes, but you can surely expect some changes to come with your career or how you feel about it. Last week’s much needed inspiration and perspective now blend into something else that you’ll get used to in the weeks or months to come: perspiration. Here comes the hard part: the work of transforming yourself in the public sphere to have more of what you really want. This could lead to a culminating achievement ahead, but there’ll be no doubt in your head or anyone else’s that you’ve earned it.

Pisces (February 19th to March 20th)

This powerful solar/new moon eclipse happens in the part of your chart that deals with wisdom and self-advancement. For you, self-advancement could be the trickiest part for a number of reasons. First, self-advancement could mean being pigeonholed and you resist that from anybody, including yourself. The other reason is that once you’re “out there,” then you could feel exposed—for others to judge or for you to critique how you’re not all the things that you dream you are. That’s exactly why the first card of a traditional Tarot deck is “The Fool.” The only way to true wisdom is to risk being a fool. A fool may or may not do stupid things, but a fool is certainly a person who struggles to align her actions with what she knows. However, when you don’t know anything, your actions might lead to nothing. Yet that’s the only way wisdom happens: by taking action. Take a big step this week. It’s time. You may not know whether it’s the right thing until afterward, but you’ll never know if you don’t take that step.